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Vostro 1400 Review


So £341.93 inc VAT and delivery for a Core 2 Duo and a dedicated graphics card. The 1 GB of RAM is a bit poor but that can easily be installed later. The laptop has only 2 memory slots so you'd need to buy 2 * 1GB modules to upgrade. They cost about £15 each so it cheaper than the £40 Dell was charging for 2GB fitted.

The laptop itself isn't as ugly as the pictures on the internet suggest. I actually like the basic sturdy look. The 14" size makes it that little more portable than the 15" notebooks which is a nice bonus.

As its a Vostro, its not loaded with all the crap that you get on other Dell Machines. You just need to uninstall MacAfee and install AVG and you're ready to go.

Performance.

IE 7 and firefox both run fast. I have no MS Office on the machine so Outlook isn't talking up all the processing power. The 1 GB is fine, I'm still upgrading to 2 GB but as long as you are going to be multitasking lots you'll be alright not upgrading. Laptops are generally and overkill in terms of power for most users. Look at the success of the EEE PC, all most people need is web browser to run.

I could run all the standard tests that PC Pro et al run but to be honest, the numbers mean little to me. I don't really care whether my machine can rar a 600MB in X seconds. 3D Mark scores mean nothing to me. I've downloaded Half Life on to the machine in that runs OK. I can't really see myself ever playing a big session on that on a laptop when I have desktop with a better card.

The 6 Cell battery lasts almost 3 hours web browsing via the wireless. That's pretty standard for a Core 2 Duo laptop.

Summary

Its an excellent notebook for size, performance and price (try getting a Core 2 Duo HP, Acer or Lenovo for any less than £400). I'd recommend one needing a cheap laptop but with good performance. Dell hasn't cut any corners on this one.

You can find longer reviews here and here.

Disclaimer.

I bought a Vostro 1400. Always be wary about a review where someone has personally bought the item. You'll get extreme reviews, either people are extremely happy or extremely disappointed. People in the middle don't bother writing reviews.

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